Swim & Other Drabbles
by CitronPresse
Summary: Twenty 100-word drabbles featuring Meredith Grey, linked by the theme of water.  Written for the drabble123 challenge on livejournal.  Character: Meredith; Pairings: Various.
1. Swim

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Derek; Rating K; Prompt: Swim

_Summary: Meredith resolves a fight with Derek. Set sometime post Season 5._

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The fight starts after breakfast, in the hallway, lit by dusty sunshine.

She called Post-it one too many times, she guesses, and suddenly they're back to

_You didn't swim._

He stares her out, challenging, the whole _I can't breathe for you_ cloud of resentment hanging over him, breath tightened to underline the point.

For a second, she's back there, hurt.

Her eyes flicker first, though. Away then back. Giving in, not up. She could hold his gaze easily, but fighting shaves fragments from their faith and one of them needs to remember who they are.

"I'm swimming now," she says.


	2. Wrapped Up and Underground

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Sadie; Rating: T; Prompt: Thirst

_Summary: A night in Amsterdam. Set pre-series, during Meredith's trip to Europe._

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Sadie's lips are soft, decadent, tasting of fries with mayonnaise, beer, espresso, grass.

A red light shines through the darkened hostel window (you're doing all the Amsterdam clichés), and hunger sparks in her eyes, whets your thirst, as she flicks back blonde hair, smiles, trails a long finger down your neck, your breasts, your ribcage and stomach, until her hand is warm between your legs.

Afterwards, she sleeps, a strand of hair in her mouth, peaceful, oblivious, scarily damaged.

It's the scary damaged part that makes you need her, feel safe; the reason you'll still be here in the morning.


	3. Versions of Violence

Character: Meredith; Rating: K; Prompt: Bath

_Summary: There's this memory she has. About sitting in the bathtub when she was a very little girl._

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There's this memory she has. About sitting in the bathtub when she was a very little girl.

She thinks there was a rubber duck. Yellow. With blue eyes, and a beak that curved (freakishly, in retrospect) in a happy smile.

But maybe she's making it up. It doesn't seem to fit her childhood really well.

Because the memory she has? It's her, stranded in cold water in a bathtub too high to climb out of; trying not to cry, but crying anyway; uselessly mouthing _mommy_.

And maybe she's making that up too. Except it seems to fit her childhood perfectly.


	4. Splash

Characters: Meredith, Lexie; Pairing: a glimpse of Mark/Lexie; Rating: K; Prompt: Splash

_Summary: Sisterly water play in the scrub room! Set Season 6._

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The tension when Mark Sloan leaves the OR (nodding at you, avoiding Lexie) is so thick you're tempted to take a scalpel and cut it.

Lexie seems to wilt deep inside.

In the scrub room, alongside her at the sink, you hesitate, wondering, then scoop up a handful of water and spray it in her direction. Hurt brown eyes widen, but then your smile infects hers and her hand is in the water taking aim at your scrubs.

You both end up soaked, unprofessional and laughing.

If you knew anything about it, you'd say this is what sisters are for.


	5. One Half of Together

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Derek; Rating: K+; Prompt: Condensation

_Summary: (Condensation reaction: a chemical reaction in which two molecules combine to form one single molecule.) Meredith muses on her marriage. Set Season 6._

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Sometimes Meredith doesn't really know how she got here.

She's smiling over the newspaper at Derek drinking coffee, days, weeks, _months_ into their marriage, feeling whole and calm and weirdly okay.

She's accustomed to understanding herself as separate. The girl who longs, hurts, screws her boundaries into a transient blur, then runs, a little scared, a little relieved, back to her (not all that comfortable) comfort zone where her breath comes more easily.

And yet she's here, and he's across the table, and she's breathing just fine. Breathing, smiling and learning how to understand herself as one half of together.


	6. Love Minus Zero

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Derek; Rating: K; Prompt: Float

_Summary: Randomly inspired by and set post episode 6.21._

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You consider (over barely touched tequila and one of your mother's surgery videos) whether this is the dark and twisty talking. But there's this contented, floaty thing going on; your own quirky warm and fuzzy; and right now you don't really care about the deep, messy reasons for you being you, feeling what you feel.

You told Derek "I love you," in the middle of a sort of fight about work. He, distracted, only just said it back.

It makes you feel normal-ish, secure, a little more married, that you're not the only one who sometimes chooses surgery over love.


	7. Reverie

Character: Meredith; Rating: PG; Prompt: Shower

_Summary: Meredith contemplates her life. Set Season 6._

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Secretly, inside, it sometimes gets too much.

It's all husbands and friends and sisters, and sisters sleeping with friends, and friends loving men she doesn't trust.

And she loses herself.

Life used to be all about her. Drinking, screwing, working, heartbreak. Hard, but all about her.

Sometimes she stands in the shower, hot water pouring over her head, and just doesn't want to get out. One minute longer, then another, an extra shampoo, a delay for conditioner. Anything for space that's all hers.

But she comes out the other side. Always.

Because, you know, caring is better than not caring.


	8. the talking leads to touching

the talking leads to touching, and the touching leads to sex

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Alex; Rating: T; Prompt: Submerge

_Summary: She fought. She really did. Set Season 6._

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Thirty minutes ago, Alex pulled that thing he does of saying the exact inappropriate right thing at the perfect time to make her feel good.

She fought. She really did. But voices softened, hands brushed, restraint got blurred, and clarity, scalpel-like, sliced through denial, cutting past the layers.

Now they're on the bed otherwise known as marital (the choice was that, Izzie's, or the one he screws her sister in); his hand unzipping her jeans, abruptly tender, consoling like his words; her hand working its way inside his.

Inappropriately right, one time, before agreeing to forget it ever happened.


	9. Drop

Characters: Meredith, Cristina; Rating: K; Prompt: Drop

_Summary: When you first met Cristina, you probably doubted if she would (or even could) cry. Set Season 6._

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When you first met Cristina, you probably doubted if she would (or even could) cry. You can't really remember now. Anyway, it doesn't matter: you found out you were wrong.

She's sitting next to you in bed, wet eyelashes, angry stifled sobs, and your hand is palm down on the comforter. A tear falls, hits your skin, runs through the crack between two fingers. At first, you can't stop looking at your hand, then you don't want to.

When your eyes finally drift towards hers, she shrugs. _Whatever._

(It's soft, though: allowing what's shared between you, her and your fingertips.)


	10. Not Starting Something

Characters: Meredith, some Lexie; Pairing: Meredith-Mark-ish; Rating: K+; Prompt: Drink

_Summary: Remember the dirty mistresses club? Set Season 6; refers to and quotes from episode 3.07._

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At your kitchen table, Lexie's grieving into her tequila. The subject is sex injuries and Mark. You want to be there for her, but it's getting slightly old, so you rub her shoulder, murmur something kind, then let your memory distract you.

_So this could be just a drink. Or this could be more than a drink_.

Neither Derek nor Lexie knows how close you came to sleeping with his best friend and (arguably) the love of her life.

You're keeping it that way. The alternative is complex and painful.

(And then, inappropriate fantasies are always better dirty _and_ secret.)


	11. Lifeline

Character: Meredith; Rating: K+; Prompt: Drown

_Summary: She knows what it's like when dying seems better than living. Sometimes it makes her brave. Refers to Season 6 finale._

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She knows what it's like when dying seems better than living. She's been there, almost done it. In the water, in the fragment of time between choice and not-choice when swimming was still possible . . . well, she didn't swim.

Sometimes she holds on to that like a kind of comfort.

Sometimes it makes her brave.

Like when a man insane for vengeance points a gun directly at her and, acquainted with the edges of death, she balances expertly, negotiating for the lives of the people she loves.

She can live with death, but she can't live without them.


	12. No Relief For The Bleeding Heart

Character: Meredith (with references to Meredith/Derek); Rating K+; Prompt: Writer's Choice – Deluge

_Summary: There's honesty with other people and there's honesty with yourself. Set episode 7.01 (spoilers)._

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Perkins can't clear her for surgery because she's not being honest. Here's the thing, though: there's honesty with other people and there's honesty with yourself.

Right now, if she told Derek about the baby; if she relived in words, out loud the heart pounding, blood ringing helplessness of watching him get shot, waiting for him to live or die? Now _that _ would make her unfit for surgery; _that _might leave her on the floor of the OR weeping or screaming or whatever it is he's afraid of.

Not being honest? She's used to it, she's comfortable with it. It's survival.


	13. Ocean Rushing Into the Spaces

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Addison; Rating: T; Prompt: Ocean

_Summary: Meredith finds understanding in L.A. Season 7-ish imaginary explorations. Spoiler (barely) for episode 7.02._

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There was a gynecological exam, because Addison's the best and Derek insisted (although he had to work, and you're here alone). Somehow awkwardness over stirrups and a speculum turned into soul-searching comradeship over glasses of red wine, and now you're here.

Weirdly predictable, maybe: there's the parallel loss, and the shared blind faith in the healing power of sex thing. But an ocean breeze is blowing across the bed, her long fingers play along your thigh, and what you wouldn't have predicted, in a million years, is the slow, suspended contentment; the fusion of sadness into warmth and fragile calm.


	14. Everybody's Got a Fighting Chance

Characters: Meredith, Alex; Rating: K+; Prompt: Ice

_Summary: Words are a beginning, the part that sticks comes later. Set post-7.02, refers to that episode and 6.19. Very slight spoiler for 7.02._

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Words can only do so much. They're a beginning, that's all; the part that sticks comes later.

When Alex told her she'd be a good mom, something shifted, a tendril of belief no one else could unearth. But it took a miscarriage to let the faith take root.

So when a patient, female, twenty-five, gets attached to him, then winds up in Psych and he goes out, gets trashed and picks a fight he comes off worse in, she doesn't repeat her reassurances. She fetches ice for his eye, sits next to him on the floor and helps him wait.


	15. planning to remember

planning to remember (so nothing will be lost in the end)

Character: Meredith (reference to Meredith/Derek); Rating: G; Prompt: Rain

_Summary: Her entire world condensed into the choice she has to make. Set post episode 7.04; **spoiler** for that episode._

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She discovers herself outside the hospital in the rain. She walked, apparently, from the lab to the wet bench she's sitting on, but trepidation swallowed the steps in between.

The sealed envelope (she made the tech lick it closed, locking the Alzheimer's question inside until - _if _- she's ready) curls at one damp corner as she holds it out in front of her in both hands, her entire world condensed into its contents and the choice she has to make.

Derek or herself.

It feels so much like the past. She wishes he understood how much she wants a future.


	16. Grey Days

Character: Meredith; Rating: K+; Prompt: Wave

_Summary: Meredith remembers a childhood trip to the ocean. Pre-series._

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One time, when she was little, Thatcher took her to the ocean.

Ellis was working, she supposes (and/or screwing the Chief before he was the Chief in an on-call room she may well have put to good use herself years later, which is . . . okay, not going there).

Anyway he took her to the ocean, and they watched the waves and the seagulls, and he held her hand.

It was an overcast day (typically, since they led an overcast life), but she didn't mind at all. The waves were grey – _like us!_ she'd giggled, and she felt almost wanted, almost loved.


	17. River

Character: Meredith; Rating: K; Prompt: River

_Summary: __The flow of your friendship was always there, like a personal law of nature._ Meredith thinks about Cristina. Set post episode 7.07. Spoilers for that episode.

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_You can't help me._

Cristina's words insinuate themselves between you and Derek, into all your dreams, and you wake up un-refreshed, firmly on your side of the bed and totally, abjectly alone.

She was your constant. Beneath everything - the good, the horrific, even the mind-numbingly mundane - the flow of your friendship was always there, steady, unquestioned, like a personal law of nature.

Now she hates you and suddenly the rules you thought you knew and knew you trusted have changed, and you don't know what to do.

(You'd ask for some advice. Except the person you'd ask?

Would be Cristina.)


	18. Shadow of Doubt

Characters: Meredith, Alex; Rating: K+; Prompt: Sweat

_Summary: It's always in the back of my mind. Set sometime Season 7 (spoilers)_

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"You ever worry you're gonna . . . ? You know." Alex shrugs, takes a swig of the beer they're sharing at the kitchen table.

She knows precisely what he's talking about (she just got off the phone with Derek, at work on his Alzheimer's trial) but she deflects,

"Huh?"

He gives a softly audible smirk, then swallows. "'Cause I do," he confesses.

"_Thank_ you!"

"Not you. Me. It's always in the back of my mind that, one morning . . . I'm gonna wake up a basket case."

She bites her lip. "Me too," she admits, then half-smiles, shrugs, lifts the beer, "To crappy DNA."


	19. Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Derek; Rating: T; Prompt: Damp

_Summary: He grins, kisses her, she can't help the smile on her face. Set sometime post-episode 7.11 (slight spoilers)._

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"I'm ovulating," she says, in the kitchen, stirring pasta sauce.

"Hmm?" He continues reading.

"Derek." She nudges him on the way to bed. "I'm ovulating, so we should . . ." She pulls a meaningful face; he doesn't respond.

In bed, she sulks behind a book until he grins, kisses her, she can't help the smile on her face, and his hand finds its way under the bedclothes to the wetness between her legs.

"I'm –"

"I know." He grins again. "But babies don't distinguish between duty sex and hot sex, and I just want to have sex with my very hot wife."


	20. In Love With A Friend

Character: Meredith; Pairing: Meredith/Alex; Rating: K+; Prompt: Boil

_Summary: There's always the hope it could be amazing. Set in some kind of future._

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It's been simmering for years, under the denial, the adamant not-going-there for the sake of other people and friendship.

But now? There's no one left to hurt, really, and their friendship's solid, their moral compasses sufficiently skewed, their hearts tough enough that, even if sex goes south, they'll still have each other.

(And there's always the hope it could be amazing.)

She hands him a coffee, scalding hot from the kettle whose bubbling and steaming is like a bad metaphor for her feelings, and lets her fingers trail against his hand.

"Yeah?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

She smiles. "Yeah."


End file.
